a match of 2 halves

it was another slippery drive down to landsend fishery, so it was no surprise to find the venue solid with an inch of hard water on top. so the ten of us which turned out proceeded to attack the ice with all sorts of things ranging from purpose made breakers to scaffold tubes on ropes to a boat and sledge hammer, it took an hour in which time i lost both of my breakers when the chains snapped and then a piece of scaffold tude , but we cleared 10 swims out to about 10 mtrs so that would do.
gary wall drew for me and handed me peg 34 , which was the winning peg from sunday , but that was a carp weight but today was a silvers match so there was no point in clearing the ice to the bush on the island where they seemed to be holed up. it was another day for 1 rig a 4x12 to .10 with a 20 808 on the end, i was hoping for some roach , perch and perhaps skimmers, chub and f1,s(whats wrong with wishing at xmas).
at the start i cupped in 10 casters and 3 maggots expecting bites straight away, but i had to wait 35 mins for that and i missed it. in the mean time dave hodgson to my left in the corner was getting odd small roach as was jason radford opposite dave but fair play to him he was managing to shake most of them off on the way in, obviously he didnt want to get to far ahead of everybody else.
2 hours in all i had to show for my efforts were 7 small roach , as i could here mr duckett up in the carpark so i wandered up and got a bag of mosella all round g bait . mixing up a small ammount i cupped it in through a kinder with a few casters in and it was as though a light switch had been turned on , the fish werent big but i was now getting regular bites from 1/2 to 1 oz roach, so thats how the second half of the match went . the only other change was to come slightly off bottom and fish caster instead of maggot on the hook as the fish on caster were 1 to 3 oz and i did get a bonus 8 oz perch towards the end. the scales arrived , dave to my left had 3,15 i had 5 lb dead which turned out to be top weight on my half of the lake, but on the other side alan(austen)healey won with 5.11 on peg 26 he had some reasonable perch and skimmers (looks like he had my wishes)all taken on maggot.
2nd next to him was martin lenaghan with 5.5 with perch mainly peg 25
3 rd kev molten the other side of the winner with 5.4 peg 28
4th me 5 lb
5th jason(shake another roach off )radford 4.14 peg 32
6 dave hodgson 3.15 peg 33
at the end of the day we all had bites and caught a few we even had mince pies and hot coffee delivered to our pegs by mr duckett, oh yes and it rained for 2 hours (lovely).
xmas eve es i write this so i hope you all have a good time i wish you all all the best for the new year , but no doubt the goverment will bo its best to screw us all up next year , but as long as they are ok they wont worry to much about us will they? i wonder how many turkey,s will be on there expenses accounts lol
shit i hate xmas